


A Fluffy Surprise

by flash in the pan (MadameLaMielleuse)



Category: David Bowie (Musician)
Genre: Cute, Funny, Gen, Humor, Stuffed Toys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 12:48:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5540648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadameLaMielleuse/pseuds/flash%20in%20the%20pan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unexpectedly, Zoe finds a package in front of her door. Without further thinking about it, she opens it...</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Fluffy Surprise

The mysterious package arrived on a late Saturday afternoon in summer.

It appeared just in front of her door, and it didn’t need great talent for clumsiness for her to almost fall over it when she tried to leave for her appointment with what was already plenty of delay. After all, she did not crash one hundred percent of her tiny height on the polished tiles of the hallway. Instead, she briefly stumbled in her impractical high heels and slammed unceremoniously against the doorframe.

Zoe let out a hearty curse. No second later, she hoped none of her neighbors had heard it. She dragged the large cardboard box into her apartment. It was surprisingly light, as if it was empty. It didn’t made any sound when moved, either. When Zoe straightened up again, she felt her complicated five-minute updo dissolving with comedic leisureliness from her short adventure.

"Oh nooe," she pleaded wailing. The thick red strand of hair fell silky and plump back over her shoulders. But there was officially no time left for things like these: she would be late even for her standards. Her girlfriends were waiting, and it was time to get drunk on a Saturday afternoon as students sometimes do. She finally stormed out the door.

 

She had almost forgotten the package when she returned home only slightly intoxicated and early that evening. It had been a rough week, not even drinks with her friends could take the edge off that, so she had called it a night. Now, in her comfy pajamas, life seemed more simple and gentler. She was busy brushing her teeth, her hair now in a ruffled red ball on top of her head, just a few inches to the side where her encounter with the door frame had made the spot swell. Zoe shuffled toward the kitchen to get herself an ice pack, when the indirect cause of the incident was still standing next to the door where she had left it.

The dry scrubbing was discontinued in the peaceful quiet of her home. Where did it even come from? She was too broke from renting this chic designer apartment. Not that she wanted to complain big time, it had been her biggest wish to live in Manhattan, but still, it left her with very little money to spend on online shopping. Also, neither Christmas nor her birthday were just around the corner.

The toothbrush still in her mouth, she got a knife instead of a cooling pack and began to slit open the sealing packing tape. She opened the lid. The box had been filled with an uncountable number of white, tiny plastic balls to protect whatever was buried in them. Without further hesitation, but growing curiosity, Zoe immersed her hand into the artificial winter wonderland with a dry rustling of the material.

She blinked in disbelief as she pulled out a giant stuffed animal by the neck. However, in this moment, her head sent a stinging 911 signal from the painful area, and Zoe marched back to the fridge. She placed the mysterious creature on the marble plate of her kitchen island and stared darkly at it from small, tired eyes, as she finished brushing her teeth and pressed the soothing cold pack on the bump on her head with her free hand.

It was a snow leopard in the size of a two-year toddler. He was also very plush and beige with very many adorable darker blotches in his fur. From his ears peeked white fluffy fur that was ideal for plucking and brushing it into shape with tiny toddler fingers. Or not so tiny adult fingers, as it turned out.

"Oh look at you pretty thing, how can I be mad at you even for causing me such pain, mh?" Zoe asked in the pause between them after she had rinsed out her minty mouth over the kitchen sink. The toothbrush now had been stuck into her "Wilma Flintstone bun“, like her sister used to say.

The snow leopard didn’t answer. With a giggle, Zoe stroked his fluffy white ruff that was on his chest and put him on her hip to carry it around. "I think I'll call you Neva."

Neva was a Spanish name, meaning snow. At least as long as her older sister had not messed with Zoe.

Now that they had been introduced to each other and the throbbing in her head slowly subsided, it was time to see who had sent her this unexpected plushy surprise.

The Styrofoam chips perfectly decorated her carpet and were a nightmare when it came to getting the statically charged things out of it again, as Zoe soon had to realize. She hissed, particularly because her search hadn’t left her with a card or the like. In a last attempt, she looked for the addressee-sticker to see if a sender’s address could be found.

At that precise moment she recognized that she had made a fatal mistake that went beyond cleaning up this mess. She drew a lungful of air. All of a sudden the organized chaos that she had caused so carelessly was even more embarrassing. Well, that was the end of her glorious idea to vacuum the Styrofoam and throw the package itself out.

 

It had not been addressed to her, but to flat 7D, a Mister D.R. Jones.

D.R. Jones stood for David Robert Jones, as the Wikipedia page on David Bowie had told her. It had taken Zoe several weeks before she had even realized who lived in the enormous double-condo down the hall, and she needed a quick google-search to remind herself of why she knew his name or where she should know it from but had already forgotten. While others would completely lose their nerves about this thought, Zoe wasn’t under the impression that her neighbor would appreciate freaking out in front of him.

When they sometimes met on the stairs or down at the reception, they exchanged a brief nod, but that was all interaction that they had had with each other in the year she had lived in the small apartment that 7C was, squeezed in between the two luxurious double-flats.

Usually, he looked solitary and somewhat grim, as one should not try to shout _Ground Control to Major Tom_ when recognizing him. This alone could be quite a challenge. When you saw him in the street, you could only determine him by his brisk walking step, because for a rock star, he was surprisingly unremarkable if he just tried. He was the classic aging man in his late Fifties, with flat cap and gold-brimmed reading glasses. No tailored, high-priced suits but raincoat and jeans. He usually carried a laptop bag – being David Bowie meant being a very busy man. Writing hits and stuff, presumably.

Zoe was not particularly eager to tell him that she had opened his package and found a goddamn plush toy in it.

She looked again at the half-emptied box, Styrofoam scraps scattered all around it, then at the clock. Now, at nine pm, she would hardly find a store where she could walk without changing out of her pajamas and buy a roll of sealing tape. There was no point in trying to fix up to box. She could as well take Neva as she was. This plan went nicely with her curiosity about what an old man like David Bowie needed a plush toy for, to be honest.

Zoe grabbed her keys and put on a pair of thick, self-knitted socks with pompons which her mother had given her for Christmas. One already had a hole, they were too comfy not to be worn excessively.

 

His apartment door was only a few meters down the hallway next to the staircase leading down to the street. With Neva over the shoulder, Zoe hesitated before she knocked instead of ringing the bell. The snow leopard seemed to look at her out of her dark glossy button eyes, trying to convince her that she should just keep her. The thing sure was excellent as a side sleeper pillow and was incredibly soft and smelled of vanilla.

With a small chuckle Zoe pressed a kiss on Neva’s oversized head and large snout. "I know, but fate will separate us, my darling."

Nobody had yet answered the door. She knocked again, more forcefully, while a glimpse of hope slowly rose in her that he had gone out.

The door was brought up a crack.

"Yes?" asked a muffled voice.

Zoe stepped closer. "Uh, hello, I am Zoe? From 7C, your neighbor," she introduced herself with an exuberant smile, but any explanations seemed superfluous. He had seen the leopard. Not that the little guy was hard to miss. Without her having the chance to say another word, the door was opened wider and David Bowie, as he breathed and lived, stepped out to her in the hallway and almost closed the apartment door behind him.

"Oh my, it is enormous", he uttered amused.

Now, in the evening, his face seemed far more relaxed. He smiled down at her, being taller than her with 5’3, as she pressed the toy to her chest and peeked up to him. His hair fell damp and dark blonde into his bright eyes. Zoe suddenly found every word that she had planned to say to him wiped from her memory. She was left to her own devices without an excuse about why she had opened the package. He was an impressive man – a lot more charismatic than he had seemed.

"Sorry about the confusion, I had to get the package away from our entrance," he began. "It's a gift, and the birthday is not until the 15th, but I wanted to make sure that it arrives on time but then..." He gestured, and Zoe looked at him with unexpected amusement. So many words at once from the oh-so-elusive rockstar.

"I've already been wondering how it found its way to my door," she admitted. She exhaled with a smile and gave Neva a squeeze.

For the first time since he had opened the door, he took a closer look at who was standing across from him in the dim hallway light. With her red, tangled hair knot, the freshly washed face and in her cute but wide pajamas, Zoe realized that she had made another mistake. She stood with burning ears and socks with pompons before David Bowie. Her neighbor who she knew close to nothing about, but nonetheless _David Bowie_.

His eyes met hers again, and when she saw a little twitch in the corner of his mouth, she continued with sudden haste. "Uh – anyway, I'm sorry – I shouldn’t have opened it, of course, and I wouldn’t have, but I thought it was for me, and... uh..."

The blue eyes turned less pungent. Delightful crow’s feet appeared around them when he lightened up. He no longer looked as old as she had remembered him. "Oh, don’t worry, it was my fault, after all. – It’s just that my daughter is terribly clever when it comes to presents – she will find everything – and this morning we were about to leave, and I had no chance in hell to smuggle it past her than to move it to your front door."

With this remark Zoe backed away slightly and looked at him sharply as he stood in front of her. "You have a child?

He nodded proudly. "She is gonna be five. The cutest thing in existence."

"And do you have a wife too, then?" She asked flippantly. Damn it! Her posh stepmother was right. From students it could be expected to talk like adults, and not as ten-year-olds.

Her tension broke up when Bowie laughed. "Yes, this is usually the easiest way to get a child. They are tiny but priceless, you cannot buy them at Walmart."

Zoe smiled before she remembered their real issue. "So, uh – what do we do now? It’s still a long time until August 15. I can keep her for you, if you want, so your daughter won’t find her," she offered. The snow leopard was still sitting on her hip.

David shook his head dismissively. "Ah, it’s not an issue. I can just put her into my study." He reached out and pulled the stuffed animal out of Zoe’s slightly clutching hands into a hug. It looked less big in his arms, but still hilarious.

"Oh," he said softly as his fingers lost themselves in the white fluff. "It really _is_ very soft." He looked back at Zoe. "Isn’t it fascinating to see what’s going on with stuffed animals these days? I never had something even _remotely_ like that!" Lost in thought, he stroked the plush cat’s head. His neighbor had to resist a mischievous laugh when she imagined how he would put the animal in an empty chair where she could watch him doing his songwriting.

"Her name is Neva," she said cheekily. "You better take good care of her."

He laughed. "We will. I promise."

They looked at each other again before he gave out a small nod toward his front door after a brief hesitation. "I better go back in. Good night – was it Zoe?”

She nodded. "Good night, Mr. Jones."

"Cute socks you have there, by the way", he chuckled.

Zoe's ears were already red, without the need for a misplaced response from her side. "Thank you."

She heard the door hinge squeak behind her. "Hey, one last thing," she said suddenly and stopped walking. His tousled blond head peeked one last time through the open door. In the darkness of the apartment behind him Neva on his arm appeared to curl up at him. "Yes?" He grinned.

"Where do you get one of these?"


End file.
